Newbie Questions

[Nitram Draw]

If you are lazy like me you should have some storage in case you lose some resource producing planets or need to rapidly expand your fleet or upgrade you empire, 400-500k is usually more than enough. You can also spend the extra resources on units and ships like sj says and mothball them if you get in a jam. I like having a cushion.
I agree that in the standard game organic and radioactives are generally not a problem, unless you are an organic race or build a lot of facilities like the converter at one time. Even with your race set to 80% you will usually have enough of these.
Some other characteristics that I have found can be reduced are environmental tolerance (80-90%) and happiness (90-95%). There are facilities that can increase happiness and I have yet to find out what effect a low tolerance has. I usually edit these down on the AI and add to some other area.

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 22 May 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 22 May 2001).]

[dogscoff]

Environmental resistance detrmines how well your species reporduces on planets with unsuitable environmental conditions.

I recently started a game where I sacrificed all my env resistance and happiness for production / combat bonuses and now all my planets are angry with 0% reproduction - and that's with urban pacification centre Is and medical facility Is.

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a career ... oooh, it's all too much for me. "

[Nitram Draw]

Do you think that is because of the reduction in happiness or resistance?

[Shoujo]

First of all thank you for all the replies

Hitting things hasn't been a problem because I can only play against comps... Which brings me to my first question. How do you people find SEIV opponents??? I looked at the PBEM forum and only saw TWO Posts

Ground troops development is actually one of the lowest priorities on my list. It's a
convenience but not a necessity. Ships with good tech on the other hand are essential for survival.

jc173: Resource problems can also be solved by stealing 'em from whatever race I'm at war with I have never seen a computer PPP me... I get back rebel colonies just by demanding them to surrender...

dogscoff: Actually I play an Organics Race mainly to help deal with the minerals shortage problems I usually have early on. Organic Armor and Replicant Centers are nice too along with Electric Ray IIIs on fighters

I also heard there was an Honor Harrington shipset in development. Any idea where this is? Is there gonna be a Peeps shipset along with it?

I've heard that people play with a high AI bonus, but does anyone play with limited resources? The reason why I'm considering doing this is because I find myself getting very bored late game (30 years). What are people's experiences (if any) with this? Do you think this'll cause the AI any problems?

[LeTharg]

Here are a couple of resources for finding human opponents:
This is a very cool looking site that manages games. The only problem is that it won't work with 1.35. The new patch should correct that. http://seiv.admiral.com/index.html

There is a PBEM interest group on Yahoo http://Groups.yahoo.com/group/SE4-PBEM

I think you will find playing humans much more interesting than the AI. For example, humans won't surrender to you--they surrender to their ally or your enemy or do whatever they can to make things hard for you.

[capnq]

quote:

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Hrm. Did they fix Emotionless so that when rioting planets surrender to you, you can actually get them to *stop* rioting?

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I dunno. I've never had a planet surrender to me; all the aliens I've captured were taken by ground invasion.

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Cap'n Q


The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft

I had rioting enemy surrendered planets in one game. The surrender came after I had blockaded two systems then moved the remaining ships in two fleets (both about 10 dreadnoughts) into the home and an adjacent system. At the surrender every planet was rioting and I just scheduled a build of UPC in each system and moved my fleets. Coincidentally the move resulted in over 20 dreadnoughts in the surrendered home system next turn. I got a message in politics Category that the population of that system had grown happier due to the military protection, and it had improved each planet in that system to angry. So I just consolidated the fleet and did the systems one by one. Before I had reached the Last system it had stopped rioting on its own, about eight turns. So you can try that if you can afford the fleet maintenance...
Definitely build UPC in every system. Another thing that helps is 150 large troops, which is a heck of a lot cheaper.

[Taqwus]

That's good to know. The only time I tried an Emotionless race, it was back far enough that Emotionless meant "emotions never *changed* with time", which caused the problem with surrendered planets. 3000 pts, 'tho. Ouch, that's a lot...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Shoujo]

Thank you for the links Hope that next patch comes out soon...

[Nitram Draw]

I've tried some finite resources games. The AI can have a hard time in long games because you can deplete a planet of resources. Early in the game the way the AI builds colonies actually helps them conserve resources. They don't run the risk of depleting a planet real fast as all of their colonied seem to have a variety of facilities.
It's a lot of fun to play this way against humans. You have to be careful what you build and you must save resources or control your extraction rate until you get a planet improvement facility.